South Hams District Council
Collecting commercial waste from some 1800 businesses across 1000 square kilometres of challenging terrain, stretching from Plymouth to Dartmoor and hemmed in by coastline, is about as difficult as it can get. However a small team of just two office based staff and three vehicles at South Hams District Council is demonstrating that the recycling needs of a cross-section of businesses can be met efficiently and competitively, if the right tools are in place.
The Council introduced Bartec System’s Waste Collector Trade! in 2009, primarily driven by a need to reduce administration time for invoicing, but with the aim of also monitoring collections to better service commercial customers. A key criteria for any new system was compatibility with the Council’s in-house Civica financial system, to facilitate automated pricing and invoicing. Bartec won the competitive tender against five other companies, given its dedicated focus upon project management, working alongside the Council to develop a system to meet its evolving needs. Bartec’s solution also provided efficient customer account management, real-time in-cab communication and event recording, route management and vehicle tracking, with a user friendly interface to encourage prompt adoption of the system.
South Hams estimate that over 400 man hours per year have been saved in invoicing administration time alone as a direct result of introducing Bartec’s system for trade waste. Moreover, contact with crews is now readily maintained, despite the remote landscape, with GPS ensuring e-mails reach them, overcoming the previous issue of intermittent mobile phone signals and therefore reducing missed collections. Whilst internal benefits have been obvious, trade customers have also been able to better manage cash flow for their waste collections, given the introduction of monthly, as opposed to quarterly, billing.
As a history builds up, the Council is now looking to use the information to plan recycling campaigns for particular waste and customer types, to provide an even more eco-friendly, customised service. For example, cardboard waste collections from retailers, glass from pubs and food waste from the myriad of establishments dealing with the tourism industry. Now that tangible benefits have been demonstrated, there are plans to grow the £1 million trade waste business, which already has a 45% local market share despite having over a dozen competitors, to encompass even more businesses.
Beverley Mason, Commercial Waste Manager responsible for preparing the business case for the new system, as well as overseeing its introduction, adds:
“Now that we have near perfected data flow, we will look to improve the efficiency of rounds and to optimise journeys. We are also beginning to use the customer database pro-actively to encourage recycling and to target new customers along existing routes, which makes it more cost effective for everyone. We are leading the way locally in a competitive commercial waste marketplace. In fact, such is the example set by Waste Collector Trade! that the Council is now looking to it as a potential model for domestic waste collection”.